A list of our favorite places, plus sites that we want to go to but haven’t seen yet, in Washington, Oregon, California, Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Nevada, and Utah. Because the western U.S. is so big and so full of awesome sights to see, I’m dividing them up, and I’ll list the Rocky Mountain states and Southwest states in my next post.

From April through December 2021, we travelled over 12,000 miles, visited 17 states, 19 National Parks (14 of which we had never been to before), 19 other National Park units, 33 state parks, and several BLM lands, public gardens, and city and county parks.

The Alabama Hills is BLM land just outside of the town of Lone Pine, CA, that is a huge area of unusual rock formations, and which has a fantastic view of the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada, including Mt. Whitney, the tallest mountain in the lower 48.